Friday, May 5, 2017

The most chilling ancient Egyptian smiting texts/curses I’ve come across in my fiction research

Inscriptional violence - smashing pots, striking spells

Here
are some of the most unsettling ancient Egyptian smiting texts I’ve
come across while researching my series of ancient Egyptian
investigative thrillers.

By
'smiting texts' I include execrations by the state as well as
curses of the private kind, such as those threatening rather unpleasant
repercussions for tomb intruders:

‘No sons shall succeed you and a donkey shall violate your wife.’

‘He shall die from hunger and thirst’

'As for anybody who shall enter this tomb in his impurity: I shall wring his neck as a bird'

‘Then the crocodile, hippopotamus, and lion will eat him’

‘He shall be cooked together with the condemned’

Some texts are frighteningly vague:

‘Then the god will be against you.”

In
the first novel in my Anson Hunter series of adventure thrillers, I give the reader
the flavour of threat formulae – this example is typical of
inscriptional violence used by the state as an instrument of esoteric
warfare:

'I
overthrow all enemies from all their seats in every place where they
are… every land, every ruler, every servant, every woman, every man,
every child, every animal… all will be destroyed forever. They will not
exist, nor will their bodies. They will not exist, nor will their souls.
They will not exist, nor will their flesh. They will not exist, nor
will their bones… they will not exist and the place where they are will
not exist.'

(The ultimate, catch-all curse and pretty chilling - see Berlin and Brussels Texts)

Come to think of it, the God of Moses hurled down some execrations himself, with devastating effects:

…
'I shall make the land of Egypt desolate, and the country shall be
destitute of that whereof it was full … I shall smite all them that
dwell therein ... then shall they know that I am the LORD.'

As my renegade hero Anson remarks during an address to a US Homeland think tank:

“You
think remote killing is no longer attempted today? It is, and it’s
being used by dissidents in the Middle East. Smiting and execration
might seem unthinkable in our desacralized Western society, so let’s
move forward to the twenty-first century. Take a look. It’s a
Palestinian text, discovered in the Dead Sea in 2002, by an Israeli
Professor and it directed virulent thoughts against the leaders of
Israel. Here’s a translation…

“Oh
God almighty, I beg you God to destroy Ariel Sharon, son of Devorah,
son of Eve… Destroy all his supporters, loyal aides and confidants, and
all those who love him and whom he loves among the human beings and
among devils and demons.”

“It
came in a small, cloth-wrapped bundle, surrounded with lead, an
interesting choice of metal since the ancient Egyptians also used lead
for hostile symbolic and magical purposes, because of its heaviness and
malleability. A modern day execration? Did this long-distance attack
strike Sharon down? His doctors probably had a more prosaic explanation,
like a stroke with massive bleeding in the brain, but it shows you what
many still believe. And if you think that’s all a bit vague and
low-tech, here’s something for the technocrats:

"Oh God, destroy all their security and policing apparatus, the computers, the electronic and listening equipment…”

There must have been a few technocrats in the room. It got a visible stir.

“The
ancient Egyptians, who could engineer stone pyramids to optical
precision, millennia before the real flowering of their empire, were not
perversely stupid in one department of their lives, nor were they
peculiarly occult. They were an intensely practical society. You don’t
keep doing something for four thousand years if it doesn’t work. They
believed that ritual execration and smiting – creative visualisation
with potent maledictions thrown in – worked, and it protected their
nation for thousands of years. A better investment perhaps than any Star
Wars anti-missile system?”

A monk, Abuna Daniel tells in The Smiting Texts:

“Regrettably,
yes, there exist Coptic magical texts inspired by the Old Religion,
written on papyrus, parchment and pottery. What do you seek? An Isis
love spell? Or do you seek a spell to make a woman pregnant? Or perhaps
you hope to lift the curse of a mother against her son’s female
companion... and at the same time give the old woman an ulcerous tumour?
How about a spell written on a blade-shaped parchment that can separate
a man and a woman?”

Anson Hunter series

He sent her warning messages through the archaeological layers of time

About Me

Roy Lester Pond’s depth of knowledge as a writer of fiction on Egypt comes from a lifetime spent studying ancient Egypt and Egyptian archaeology. He and his wife Brenda have been to Egypt on numerous research trips. Roy is fascinated by the mystery of ancient Egypt and its potency and relevance for today’s world. ‘The Smiting Texts’ was his first archaeological thriller, followed by a series featuring renegade Egyptologist Anson Hunter, as well as other stand-alone adventures.
Roy spent much of his life in Africa and now lives in Australia.
Roy Tweets regularly about Egypt and adventure fiction writing under the Twittername “Egyptsnippets”.